CHARGES ARE SEEN IN POLICE GUNFIRE

By SABRINA TAVERNISE and WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM; Jess Wisloski contributed reporting for this article.

Published: June 10, 2004

Correction Appended

A grand jury in Manhattan handed up charges of second-degree manslaughter yesterday against a police officer who fatally shot an unarmed West African immigrant in a Chelsea warehouse last year, two people with knowledge of the case said.

The charges against the officer, Brian Conroy, who shot Ousmane Zongo, an immigrant from Burkina Faso, on May 22, 2003, in the corridor of a self-storage warehouse on 27th Street near the West Side Highway, were expected to be announced today, one of the people said. Officer Conroy is expected to surrender with his lawyer, Stuart London.

Mr. London would not discuss the details of the case yesterday. Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau, declined to comment.

Last night, Sanford A. Rubenstein, a lawyer for Mr. Zongo's family, said that they had been told of the grand jury's actions by reporters. ''They feel they've been patient, waiting for justice,'' he said of the Zongo family. The charges, if true, he said, show that the ''grand jury has done justice.''

A man who identified himself as a relative of Mr. Zongo said by telephone from the family's house in Yonkers last night that he had not been officially notified of the grand jury's actions. The family has been following the case, he said, ''to find out exactly why they kill somebody for no reason.''

Mr. Rubenstein said that a civil case was pending, but that the family's ''primary concern is the criminal case.''

The shooting of Mr. Zongo drew significant criticism of the Police Department's practices. It came one week after a 57-year-old woman in Harlem died of a heart attack after the police threw a stun grenade into her apartment during an erroneous raid. It also evoked the fatal shooting of the unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo in 1999.

Patrick J. Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association, the police union, defended the officer's actions in a statement and said he expected him to be cleared. ''We believe that the grand jury made a mistake indicting this police officer and are confident that he will be exonerated when all the facts are known,'' Mr Lynch said.

But police officials and investigators raised questions about the shooting shortly after it occurred in the warehouse's warren of hallways. There were no witnesses who actually saw the shooting, and no surveillance cameras, so the case hinged on Officer Conroy's testimony and on forensic evidence.

The key elements of Officer Conroy's testimony before the grand jury centered on when he drew his weapon and why, rather than the moment at which he fired during a struggle with Mr. Zongo, one of the people with knowledge of the case said.

The charges follow a yearlong investigation by Mr. Morgenthau's office, whose prosecutors began presenting evidence to the grand jury in April. Officer Conroy testified before the panel at length.

Officer Conroy was left alone in the warehouse to guard a storage room after the police executed a search warrant there as part of an investigation into a compact disc counterfeiting operation. Mr. Zongo had nothing to do with the counterfeit ring, but worked restoring African art and artifacts in another storage room at the warehouse.

After the shooting, police officials said at the time, Officer Conroy told supervisors investigating the incident that Mr. Zongo ''tried to take my gun; I had to shoot him.''

A person is guilty of second-degree manslaughter when he or she recklessly causes the death of another person. In such cases, the maximum sentence is generally 15 years.

In recent years, indictments of police officers on charges that they caused a death in the line of duty have been rare. Grand juries have been reluctant to find fault in instances when officers make mistakes in settings where they say they had reasons to be fearful or were acting in good faith.

In February, a grand jury declined to indict a police officer, Richard S. Neri, in the shooting death of an unarmed teenager on a Brooklyn rooftop.

In the case of Mr. Diallo, the officers were indicted on murder charges, but were ultimately acquitted of all criminal charges. Mr. Diallo's family later brought a civil suit, claiming racial profiling by the Police Department was a cause of his death. The city settled the case for $3 million. While no New York City police officer has ever been convicted of murder for actions in the line of duty, Francis X. Livoti, a police officer who used a chokehold in 1994 to arrest Anthony Baez, who subsequently died, was convicted in a 1998 federal trial of violating Mr. Baez's civil rights.

In the Dongan Hills neighborhood of Staten Island, where Officer Conroy had lived with his parents in a red brick attached home, a neighbor expressed concern for the family.

The neighbor, who said he has known Mr. Conroy since he was born, added that Officer Conroy had moved into his grandmother's house in the past year.

Speaking of the case against the officer, the neighbor said: ''He was a little touchy about it. I don't even want to ask him how he's making out.''

Photos: Ousmane Zongo, left, was fatally shot by a police officer in May 2003. His wife, Salimata Sanfo, and brother, Daouda Zongo, held a news conference last August to announce a lawsuit against the city. (Photo by Ruth Fremson/The New York Times)(pg. B6)

Correction: June 11, 2004, Friday A front-page article yesterday about the grand jury indictment of a police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed immigrant in a Manhattan warehouse misstated the officer's given name. He is Bryan Conroy, not Brian.